Tagged 'lead nurturing'

The more change occurring the more questions arise. This year is no exception. B2B Marketers are experiencing ongoing as well as new challenges as we start to hit stride in 2013. What are the big future questions for B2B Marketers? Let's look at a few:
How do we generate more leads and keep them?
Survey after survey indicate B2B marketers have this issue top of mind. Creating demand and filling up a pipeline is loaded with pressure packed environments. In my qualitative buyer research work, I see shifts in behavior on the part of buyers. There are unique sets of goals and behaviors emerging in the area of nurturing. Calling into question how leads should be defined and segmented. Lead research and unique lead persona development will emerge to help B2B marketers address this most important question.
How do we use marketing automation effectively?
Marketing automation has crawled out of infancy stage and is being more widely adopted. Many organizations have been in the "let's just get started" phase. Experiencing the pain of implementation. The next level question is how to make marketing automation more effective to get better results.
How do we operationalize content marketing?
Content marketing has certainly arisen as one of the core capabilities B2B marketing... Read more

Marketo wants to talk revenue cycle and lead nurturing #marketotour (Photo credit: servantofchaos)
A problem facing organizations today is generating more leads. Making this issue even more challenging is changes in buying behavior. Depending on which study to reference, buyers are performing different activities for up to 70% of their buying evaluation before sales intervention.
A recent report by the Aberdeen Group on sales performance shows there is a fair degree of dissatisfaction among sales leaders. 56% saying they were not seeing sufficient growth in top line revenue. Nearly 30% expressed dissatisfaction with lead conversion to sales. A recent CSO Insights report indicated that only 20% of organizations understood their buyer’s buying process. These two perspectives combined point to one of the key issues – targeting the wrong buyer.
Looking back on over 12 years of qualitative buyer research and buyer persona development work, I found in 6 out of every 10 organization– a different buyer was identified than the organization had been targeting! If you are off-target with the buyer – you will be off-target on your demand generation and lead generation.
Getting On Target
Marketing and sales leaders today are looking to increase their percentage of being on target when it comes to lead generation. There... Read more

If you are a BtoB marketer, who is not currently engaging in lead nurturing to help further qualify and sway “unqualified” leads, you have a huge opportunity to gain a competitive advantage and capture more of those sales.

In nature, “nurturing” always implies a particular relationship between the nurturer and the nuturee: the party with more knowledge/experience/information/power shares those qualities with the party possessing less, with the goal of bringing about positive change. Appropriately, “lead nurturing” in the email marketing world refers to the educational relationship you create with subscribers, with the goal of persuading them to act. When you get it right, you’ll not only get more customers to say yes, you’ll also build a core of loyal clients who throw their business your way again and again.
Basics of Lead Nurturing
Lead nurturing isn’t just sending emails once a week. It involves providing relevant, useful information to the subscriber about the offer you want him to accept. And it requires planning.

Create a target audience persona. Your email list includes a variety of personality and customer types, but in order to create the most effective email campaign, you’ll need to choose one target persona to focus on. Create each email with that personality in mind. What motivates them? What information do they need? What questions do they want answered? Focus on building a relationship with your target audience in order to earn their loyalty.
Determine a consistent email frequency and sequence.... Read more

The new buyer experience economy has resulted in shifting the economic value of many sales and marketing tactics over the past couple of years. One approach whose value is on the rise is that of Lead Nurturing. It’s no wonder why – we have seen major alterations of buyer behavior and buying patterns with technology enabling more buyer control over the majority of the buying cycle process. This makes nurturing a key element of preventing buyers from disengaging from the buying cycle.

The approach taken towards lead nurturing could make a huge difference. With the concept of lead nurturing still in many respects a new one, companies are struggling on exactly what to do and perhaps how to implement lead nurturing. A most common approach, of what can be referred to as “picking and choosing” activities, may actually be hindering the further evolution of lead nurturing. Here are just a few reasons why: